Israel’s strategic analysis community reacted to the news on Sunday that a US Special Forces team had killed Islamic State (IS) terror militia leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with statements that expressed admiration for the US move and hope that it would help turn the tide against jihadi terrorism and the general trend of regional tumult throughout the Middle East. “For us Israelis, the threat from ISIS is secondary,” said Amos Yadlin, chief of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank at Tel Aviv University. “We would like to see the US act in a similar way against [Iranian Quds force commander Qassem] Soleimani, and [Hezbollah head Hassan] Nasrallah.”

Incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet meeting Sunday morning that the country needs a government with “wide shoulders” able to make “hard decisions” amidst an escalating security crisis which IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Aviv Kochavi said last week is menacing the Jewish State on all its borders. Just hours ahead of his meeting with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, which ended with no apparent progress towards a unity government, Netanyahu said that such a unity government “is what the State of Israel needs at the current time.”

Massive street demonstrations continued over the weekend in Lebanon and Iraq, with many protesters holding signs and chanting slogans against the influence of Iran in their countries. The protests in Lebanon showed no signs of dissipating despite pleas and even veiled threats of violence from the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shit’ite terror militia Hezbollah, while the Iraqi protests only seem to have intensified following a harsh crackdown by the Baghdad regime which has left over 100 protesters dead and many more wounded.

The campaign to Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Israel suffered some more defeats over the weekend as two Israeli women made international headlines. The first was kickboxer Yulia Sachkov, who won the gold medal at the Kickboxing World Championship in Sarajevo, Bosnia on Saturday. The second was Dr. Deganit Paikowsky, who was appointed as a vice president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), a space advocacy organization based in Paris.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was in Jerusalem on Monday as part of a regional tour to visit with heads of state of US allies. Standing alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, he told reporters that sanctions on Iran are having the desired effect of weakening Teheran’s leverage over its neighbors. “We have executed on a maximum pressure campaign for sanctions,” he said. “They have worked, they are working, they are cutting off the money.”

The Israeli notion of mamlachtiut does not translate well into English. Coming from the word mamlacha, or kingdom, the word suggests the quality of acting in a sovereign-like fashion. David Ben-Gurion used the term when he spoke of the Jews’ usage of military power while exercising caution with their political power. In Israeli history books, the term is conjured every time the nation faces a major juncture that requires individuals and factions to transcend partisan loyalties. Judging from their behavior in the recent elections, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz both appear to be fuzzy on the meaning of the word.

The present U.S. focus on Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds makes it all too easy to ignore the growing instability of Iraq, the fact that IS is already increasing its operations in that country, and that it is Iran, Russia, and Syria that seem to have growing influence. U.S. military-to-military relations remain relatively good at a professional military level, but continue to slow and get worse at a political level. At the same time, the U.S. does not seem to have any clear policy to deal with Iraq’s deteriorating political, governance, and economic situation, and to support any serious form of national building.

It was the theological shock of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 that challenged the fundamental church teachings and doctrine concerning the Jewish people. For centuries, the Christian mainstream thought that the Jews, who were blamed for killing Christ, were cursed to endless wanderings. This is the key distinguishing factor between Christian friends and foes of Israel: whether or not one believes the Jews still have an abiding covenantal relationship with God.